Empire:Total War Demo

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Regs

Lifer
Aug 9, 2002
16,666
21
81
9.5 IGN


Got my copy today at Best Buy. They had to look in the warehouse for it =). Going crack the game open some time tonight. Cya in a few months!
 

Dorkenstein

Diamond Member
Jul 23, 2004
3,554
0
0
Fudge, looks like the "Special Units" edition is gone from steam, guess I shouldn't bother waiting for it to come down in price then.
 

Alex C

Senior member
Jul 7, 2008
355
0
76
Finally got the game downloaded, but it crashes every time I try to start a campaign or tutorial. The Demo did this too, I just assumed it was a problem with that but I guess not. What should I try to get this working? I've got the latest Catalyst driver, so it shouldn't be that, anything else I should check?
 

CrackRabbit

Lifer
Mar 30, 2001
16,642
62
91
Originally posted by: Alex C
Finally got the game downloaded, but it crashes every time I try to start a campaign or tutorial. The Demo did this too, I just assumed it was a problem with that but I guess not. What should I try to get this working? I've got the latest Catalyst driver, so it shouldn't be that, anything else I should check?

I would say update your drivers for EVERYTHINHG.
Next step would be to run memtest to make sure your memory is good.
 

melijak

Senior member
Aug 5, 2004
219
0
0
just got my copy at Fry's in Chicago area - 44$
Its still installing, over 20 min on a 1st disk....
 

Spike

Diamond Member
Aug 27, 2001
6,770
1
81
Originally posted by: CrackRabbit
Originally posted by: Alex C
Finally got the game downloaded, but it crashes every time I try to start a campaign or tutorial. The Demo did this too, I just assumed it was a problem with that but I guess not. What should I try to get this working? I've got the latest Catalyst driver, so it shouldn't be that, anything else I should check?

I would say update your drivers for EVERYTHINHG.
Next step would be to run memtest to make sure your memory is good.

Mine ran fine when I gave the game a whirl this morning and I'm using Cat 8.10's.
 

Alex C

Senior member
Jul 7, 2008
355
0
76
Originally posted by: CrackRabbit
Originally posted by: Alex C
Finally got the game downloaded, but it crashes every time I try to start a campaign or tutorial. The Demo did this too, I just assumed it was a problem with that but I guess not. What should I try to get this working? I've got the latest Catalyst driver, so it shouldn't be that, anything else I should check?

I would say update your drivers for EVERYTHINHG.
Next step would be to run memtest to make sure your memory is good.

I updated everything and it still wouldn't run. I tried turning off D3D Overrider and it worked, I don't know why but that seems to be what was messing it up.
 

Regs

Lifer
Aug 9, 2002
16,666
21
81
Originally posted by: Imp
Damn, gotta make a lunch run tomorrow then. Wish Steam was actually financially enticing.

Empire TW runs on Steamworks, so you're screwed either way like FEAR 2. Requires STEAM to launch =(.
 

Skott

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2005
5,730
1
76
So Steam is required even if you buy the retail box and solo play? Or is it needed only for the MP? I'm kinda holding back on buying the game for a bit to see how it goes. I'll probably buy it in a week or so if its decently good. I should have some free time by then.
 

Regs

Lifer
Aug 9, 2002
16,666
21
81
Originally posted by: Skott
So Steam is required even if you buy the retail box and solo play? Or is it needed only for the MP? I'm kinda holding back on buying the game for a bit to see how it goes. I'll probably buy it in a week or so if its decently good. I should have some free time by then.

Yes, Steam is required. I'm sure it will likely make modding it a bit more difficult than last time too.
 

TehMac

Diamond Member
Aug 18, 2006
9,976
3
71
Originally posted by: Regs
Originally posted by: Skott
So Steam is required even if you buy the retail box and solo play? Or is it needed only for the MP? I'm kinda holding back on buying the game for a bit to see how it goes. I'll probably buy it in a week or so if its decently good. I should have some free time by then.

Yes, Steam is required. I'm sure it will likely make modding it a bit more difficult than last time too.

I'm not sure, Creative Assembly seems to think STEAM will in fact increase the community and make it easier to get mods. Alot of STEAM games have mods (Garry's Mod).
 

imported_Imp

Diamond Member
Dec 20, 2005
9,148
0
0
Originally posted by: Regs
Originally posted by: Imp
Damn, gotta make a lunch run tomorrow then. Wish Steam was actually financially enticing.

Empire TW runs on Steamworks, so you're screwed either way like FEAR 2. Requires STEAM to launch =(.

I'm ok woth Steam, I just wish that buying it digitally was actually cheaper. I had to make 3 sets of trips to the same 2 stores to pick it up this week. All but one were lunch runs though, so no real loss.

Installing now... 3Gb out of 14Gb *shudders*. Why did I choose to buy an 80Gb HDD? Cheap ass.
 

imported_Imp

Diamond Member
Dec 20, 2005
9,148
0
0
Ok, gave it a couple hours last night. First point I'd like to make is that I need a new computer. Load times suck, but they are a lot better than the demo.

Moving on, I'm playing the grand campaign first as Great Britain. The new interface and style is interesting, and it freaked me out when I thought that there were so few cities. The satellite towns do indeed make it more necessary to move your army out of a city to take care of business. In Medieval 2 and Rome, I just played seige after seige after seige, and waited for the population to become less pissed before moving on. Now, I've got a rebellion in spain and have to actually do something about it.

Fighting-wise, I suck. I lost my two biggest navies, one of which I had overwhelming superiority, but managed to loose every ship but one. Never played naval battle games before, so it'll be a while before I figure out the tactics; lining up and broadsiding only works so well.

On land, I'm doing better, but haven't gotten everything down yet. I'm just lining everyone up and praying for the best, which really isn't that useful, especially since muskets appear to finally have a limited useful range.
 

ayabe

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2005
7,449
0
0
I've got some sound issues(clipping, in and out) and a video memory leak that causes the game to crash after X amount of hours. But I think my vista 64 drivers are crap for my onboard sound.

Played the Road to Indepedence, it was good, but I was sort of hoping there was a way to play the US in the normal campaign but you can't and I don't know if it's a bug, but I completed the victory conditions in the 1790's and the game just kicked me out the menu, whereas the ingame screen seems to indicate that you can continue playing until 1825. Dunno what's up with that.

Started my main campaign as Austria, already kicked the Ottomans out of Europe, but my economy sort of stinks compared to the US, which was very easy to get going.

Love the game, can't say I'm very good fighting battles yet but I'm getting there. Technology has a huge role to play and in the beginning your muskets will suck pretty hard, but if you tech up you'll notice huge differences.
 

aka1nas

Diamond Member
Aug 30, 2001
4,335
1
0
I was under the impression that finishing the Road To Independence Mini-Campaign unlocks the US on the Grand Campaign.
 

ayabe

Diamond Member
Aug 10, 2005
7,449
0
0
Originally posted by: aka1nas
I was under the impression that finishing the Road To Independence Mini-Campaign unlocks the US on the Grand Campaign.

Me too but that's not the case, unless it's bugged. Other people have reported the same thing, getting kicked back to the menu.
 

TraumaRN

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2005
6,893
63
91
I'm downloading now from steam...fairly steady 350-500KB/s its been an hour and up to 19%...oh the waiting is killing me....
 

TraumaRN

Diamond Member
Jun 5, 2005
6,893
63
91
Alright...my steam download totally has bogged way down....fricking UT3 release. Its making the steam servers beg for mercy....you would think Valve wouldn't release to hugely popular things in the span of a couple days...*sigh*

Looks like I wont be playing til at least tomorrow.
 

Skott

Diamond Member
Oct 4, 2005
5,730
1
76
I've never used Steam so I'm curious what I need to do to play the game on two different PCs. In the past I had a TW game installed on my main home gaming PC and also on my SFF rig which I transport around with me when I want to take it with me to wherever I'm going. I just carried the disk with me. Do I need to buy two copies of the game or can I use a single copy? Anyone have it installed on two different PCs? I'm not sure what Steam's rules are about using more than one PC.
 

Rebel44

Senior member
Jun 19, 2006
742
1
76
Originally posted by: Skott
I've never used Steam so I'm curious what I need to do to play the game on two different PCs. In the past I had a TW game installed on my main home gaming PC and also on my SFF rig which I transport around with me when I want to take it with me to wherever I'm going. I just carried the disk with me. Do I need to buy two copies of the game or can I use a single copy? Anyone have it installed on two different PCs? I'm not sure what Steam's rules are about using more than one PC.

Game will be registered to your Steam account. You can install it on multiple computers. To play you will need to login to your Steam account.
 

Cellulose

Senior member
May 14, 2007
360
0
76
Is it possible to un-register and register to another account?





edit: Also, this may have been asked already, but are the codes for the USS Constitution etc. (i.e the non-special forces elite units), linked to individual accounts? (Can they be re-used?)

Cheers.
 

Markbnj

Elite Member <br>Moderator Emeritus
Moderator
Sep 16, 2005
15,682
14
81
www.markbetz.net
I really wish they hadn't gone the Steam route. I played all the earlier titles, so I had to buy and play this, but having Steam in the way just isn't a value proposition for me. More importantly, since I run on Vista I often have to set the compatibility properties of game shortcuts to get everything working smoothly. The most problematic areas are chunks of code requiring elevated privileges, and incompatibility with the desktop window manager, theming, and view composition. Usually turning all those things off for a specific game solves all the problems, but I have no idea how to do that when the game process is launched from within Steam. Even if you ask Steam to create a desktop shortcut what you get is a shortcut to Steam with some parameters to launch the game process. So when ETW launches I have probems with the window minimizing during load, and other issues that I could otherwise solve. I get the point of Steam for digital distribution, but I bought $45 worth of DVDs. I don't need Steam. Kind of a bummer, but I suspect it's a trend that will accelerate.

In terms of gameplay, I only messed with it for two hours last night. I'm intrigued enough to keep playing, but I did find the world as presented at startup to be pretty overwhelming. First off it's farking huge, with territories in the Americas, Caribbean, India, and all across Europe and northern Asia. Second, there is a lot going on when you pop in. I started with five or six well-developed cities, three or four navies, and issues to deal with in two or three places across the large play map. Good thing it's turn based strategy :). I kind of miss the old Civ model of starting with one nomadic band and working up from there, but even the MTW model of starting with one major city and a small, landlocked civ was preferrable for me to being dumped into the middle of this much bigger thing. But I'm sure that once I get into it I'll enjoy it.